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Warning, this book came from rage, so anvilicious you should probably wear a hard hat. Please take advantage of the ability to read the first few chapters before buying.

The war between Aldance and Amnisa has been dragging on for three years, and it is past time Aldance put a stop to it. The Aldench have their chance when they learn that the secret to the Amnisans' endurance is their bokra grounds, a rare soil that enhances the health of soldiers, crops, and livestock. Knowing that stealing these grounds will crush the will of the enemy, the military picks a team to perform that task. Edana Carver, charismatic and brash, has never led an expedition before, but such a simple assignment is the perfect opportunity for her to gain some experience. Manis il Havoc, with the ability to crack locks and get into places she shouldn’t be, is bitter over her recent demotion, but no one doubts her intelligence. Damohn Niles, young and pretty, is a talented medic with something to prove. Frayne, the foreigner, is a wonder on the battlefield and a little too secretive. Together, they were more than capable of striking deep into the heart of Amnisa, taking what they wanted, and destroying anything that got in their way.

Alcina Noatak had grown up knowing she would one day be the High Scribe of Gydnerth, but that day was not supposed to arrive so soon. Responsible for drafting the laws that rule her country, Alcina must navigate intrigue and danger no one could have expected her to anticipate, and one wrong move could blow apart not just her life, but the lives of everyone around her.

Catherine is a happy novelist, but a little strapped for cash, so the six-week job at computer software company Create and Conquer is a welcome chance to make some extra money. She meets the CEO, Lance MacCallan, on her very first day. He’s gorgeous, rich, admired by all around him, and a total bully.

But it’s not the attacks on her competence or the threats to fire her that have Catherine rattled. No, it’s when the CEO starts trying to convince her to go out with him that things get really unpleasant.

A portion of the author’s royalties is donated to organisations working with survivors of abuse. Currently, the organisation is the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres. Please follow the link to see the kind of work they do. http://www.sexualassaultsupport.ca/

Shield Dunleavy Mallorough and Source Shintaro Karish have lived in Flown Raven for five years, protecting its residents from natural disasters and enjoying the lack of interference from both the council of the Triple S and the Emperor. When they are unexpectedly summoned to Shidonee’s Gap by the council, Lee and Taro learn that while they have been living at their isolated post, there have been a lot of changes in the world, changes that will drag them into unimaginable duties and unprecedented danger.

E-versions are available through Smashwords and can be downloaded to a variety of e-readers, including kindle, apple i-pad, personal computers, i-phone, sony, kobo, android, and others. If you don't have an e-reader, you can download it as a pdf file. You have the option of getting it for free or paying if you want. If you choose to pay, you can pick any amount you want. It's here:

The respondent Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) decided that it would not accept TWU law school graduates as licencees.

That is not the case. The society refuses to accredit TWU’s law school. Law graduates would be able to approach the society on an individual basis and be accepted on their personal merits. ( Read more... )

The judge who chose not to allow any intervenors representing LGBTQ advocates in the case that very much involves the university discriminating against members of the LGBTQ community claims he wasn't deliberately excluding them. He claims that he thought the six he had chosen represented their views. That's such bullshit I can't believe his nose didn't grow to a metre in length.

I'm sure most politicians and judges think the rest of us are dim, but when it comes to bigots, their contempt for the rest of us is so blatant. They don't even try to hide it.

This quote is of particular interest to me:

“I would be the last one to give the false impression that I have no consideration for specific groups like the LGBTQ,” he said in the interview. “The last one.”

What is it about bigots that they feel compelled to use absolutes? He couldn't just say he would never ... etc. No, he would be the last one.

Also, the sentence doesn't make sense. Is he saying he would be the last one to give a false impression, or the last one to give no consideration to etc., etc. or what?

Trinity Western University has finally released it's application to the Supreme Court of Canada, opposing the Ontario court ruling that the Law Society of Upper Canada could refuse to accredit the university on the grounds that it required all students and faculty to sign a covenant agreeing to refrain from sexual relations outside "traditional marriage." We know what that means. Our side consider this discrimination.

I haven't read their document yet, it's fifty pages and I haven't had the time or the brain power, but there has already been a twist to the process. Something like 26 groups applied for intervenor status in the process. An intervenor is a group or person who is not one of the parties but is allowed to provide material that is considered relevant to the case.

The Supreme Court judge hearing the application allowed six (or nine? Can't remember right now) applicants, which included religious groups but no groups representing the LGBQTA community. It was infuriating. Fortunately, another judge in the Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of reversing the first judge's decision and granted status to all 26 applicants.

Here's an interesting fact. The first judge was appointed by the homophobic exxxxx-prime minister Stephen Harper.

Still, 26 is a lot. How am I going to read all of their court documents?

I'm working with a company that is going through liquidation. The guy who represents the liquidators has been there for about five days and has managed to alienate everyone. During my first conversation with him, he bragged about flying up from Las Vegas on the red-eye and going to work on less than three hours of sleep. (He had no interest in anything about me.) He gives orders he has no right to make, demands for work that is not only outside of the job descriptions of the employees, but would be counterproductive, given everyone is running flat out to do their actual jobs. I wonder how well he handles being told no. And he disapproves of people taking their days off. He appears to think people should be working every day, including days for which they wouldn't be paid. Joy.

To review, the Ark Encounter is a building that is shaped like a boat on one side, said to be built to the specifications in the Bible, though that's impossible due to the half a building bit. It is in Kentucky, and the company that built it, Answers in Genesis, owned by Ken Ham, got a ton of tax breaks, and a bunch of land for $1, from the nearby county. The county is really strapped for cash and made the mistake of believing Ham when he promised that the ark would revitalize the community, increasing tourism and bringing tens of thousands of jobs.

That hasn't happened. The attendance at the ark is hard to determine, largely because Ham keeps moving the goal posts and doesn't provide any evidence of his claims. For example, he says that close to 10,000 people a day visit the ark. While I've read reviews that say the ark is crowded, there's no photographic evidence. The photos and videos that are online show a place that's kind of dead. Also, 10,000 people a day for a year would be 3,650,000 people. But then, sometimes he says it's more like 8,000, and then sometimes he points out that attendance was slower during the winter months, which is natural, except during the winter months he kept talking about the amazing attendance. So he's all over the place.

The ark says it employs 900 people, which I have a hard time believing, but even if that's true, it falls far, far short of promises, and anyone who isn't a young earth creationist need not apply. Whatever the attendance at the ark, those who visit are not stopping by the local businesses.

Going back to the attendance, Ham initially claimed 2 million would visit the first year. Then he said from 1.4 m to 2 m, which is one hell of a lot of wiggle room. When the first anniversary came into view, and it looked like it would be only about 1 m, he started saying that the 1.4 - 2m estimate was for a normal year, without defining what normal means or why this past year isn't normal.

Within two weeks he went from claiming that attendance was higher than expected and was bringing business to the nearby community to blaming atheists and secular news for dissuading businesses from investing in the area to blaming the nearby town for not building the infrastructure needed to make the ark, and then the county, successful.

The next bit is vicious. The county created a tax to help pay for safety services. The tax on the ark would be 50 cents per $28/$40 ticket. Ham has gone to court to stop this taxation, claiming that the ark is a ministry. Except the ark is a for profit enterprise. So then, the for-profit part of the company sold the property to a not-for profit part of the company, just to avoid this tax. For $10.

How much of a scumbag is this guy? The county was incredibly generous to him, he knows they're barely hanging on, but he pulls an unethical stunt like this to avoid a tax that would provide services his ark would benefit from. Unless he's ok with the fire department watching his boat burn down because he hadn't paid for their protection.

But joy of joys, the state has declared that by selling the property to himself - really - he breached one of the agreements, and the result could be that the company would lose a tax incentive of $18 m. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving scum bag.

Side note, Ham really hates it that the rainbow is associated with the inclusion of the LGBTQA community and love and peace and all that. He's going to have the ark lit up with a rainbow every night to take back the rainbow from, you know, everyone who's a decent human being, to celebrate genocide.

I'm not liberal, I am left of liberal, unless that farther left party implodes. The last provincial election was the first I'd ever voted in, which is shameful, but whatever. Some year I might actually vote for a mayor. Anyway, during the last election, I hadn't known what was going on at the provincial level, and I decided to do some research. I had been vaguely aware that the liberals had made a mess, but had just gotten new leadership. I didn't know how similar, if at all, the provincial parties were to their national counterparts, and I was prepared to do some research. What had me voting liberal was a ridiculous document released by the conservatives about how they were going to create a million jobs, founded on inept math - more like 400,000 jobs, and only if no one got a raise in eight years, and even that was highly speculative - lies, some meaningless promises, and the old conservative standby, the way to a strong economy is austerity combined with lower corporate taxes and less regulation.

Anyone tries to claim that lowering corporate taxes and cutting back regulations benefits anyone but big business owners and I'm out of there.

Plus the conservative leader looked kinda psycho.

So I voted liberal.

They've been a mess, and the conservatives have chosen a new leader, so I took a gander at his website. This is what is under the party's goals and principles, in quotes, with my thoughts following.

"WHAT WE STAND FOR

The following are the aims and principles of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party:

(a) We believe in freedom of speech, worship and assembly, in loyalty to Canada and to the Monarch of Canada and in the rule of law."

There are a bunch of freedoms listed in the Charter of Rights and Freedom, and I think the fact that they pledge support for only these three is significant. I believe in freedom of speech, but that freedom has, like every other right, limits. It has been my experience that the people who scream the loudest about their freedom of speech are those who want to spew the most horrific vicious crap about people not like them, without consequences. We don't have freedom of worship, but freedom of religion, which is a slightly different thing, and I'm not thrilled to have religion promoted over other rights, like equality, in the principles of a political party.

Loyalty to Canada? Who doesn't have that as a principle? WTF?

Loyalty to the Monarch is code for favouring "old stock" Canadians, which, according to the lack of knowledge held by many, means white Canadians of British background, though white Europeans from other countries are ok, too.

We all believe in the rule of law, too, but there is something threatening about the way the term is used here. Like they believe people who smoke grass should spend ten years in jail.

"(b) We believe that government should serve the people and that progress requires a competitive economy, which, accepting its social responsibilities, allows every individual freedom of opportunity and initiative and the peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of his or her own labour."

This is quite the word salad. I propose that pushing these two ideas together, government serving the people and a free market is best with the peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of his or her own labour, means that they think the government should let the business sector run free with little taxation. The "accepting its social responsibilities" is meaningless.

"(c) We believe in the ethical and accountable execution of the business of government."

Good for you. So does everyone. Until they get elected.

"(d) We believe that the interests of Ontario are best served by a strong, united and democratic Canada."

Recently, "united Canada" has been code for pushing back against multiculturalism.

"(e) We believe that economic freedom, entrepreneurial spirit and the right to private property are essential to economic prosperity and political freedom."

Free market good, regulation and socialism bad. In case you didn't get it the first time.

"(f) We believe in the values of the family which encourage tolerance and mutual support."

They don't flat out use the exact term "family values" because they know that, in Canada, such rhetoric has come to mean demeaning anyone who isn't part of a white, heterosexual family. It's anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-sex education. And it's really best if mom stayed home and take care of the kids. But that's what this principle means.

"(g) We believe that social justice entails equality of opportunity, including fair and equal treatment for all Ontarians and the provision of support to those in need."

This sounds good, but I've noticed that the conservative definitions of "fair" and "in need" are different from mine.

"(h) We believe in and accept our responsibilities for the preservation of Ontario's heritage and cultural diversity and the conservation and renewal of our environment for present and future generations."

Another example of taking two different ideas and shoving them into the same item. The bit about Ontario's heritage - which means the good old ways - is in direct conflict with cultural diversity. The conservation and renewal of the environment sounds great. If it's sincere. The liberal party has completely fallen down in this area.

Anyway, skeezy. Unless there are some significant changes, I don't think I'll be voting conservative. That doesn't mean I'll be voting liberal. They've seriously screwed up. I'll have to see what the NDP will be doing. That bit about imploding, that was what they did last time.

I have mentioned before that after I take my sleeping pills, but before I fall asleep, I sometimes do things that I don't remember the next day. This has included eating, making phone calls, ordering a book off Amazon, and buying a place in a convention in another city. Last night involved posting on my blog that I had an excellent new idea for the book I'm currently writing. I remember neither the blog nor the idea.

I know I was losing motivation for my detective/sci-fy/urban fantasy thing, but I've gotten a second wind, and a new great idea that just hit me, and will result in a great new plot that will ultimately prove something I can't tell you about. There's much I can say now, but the sleeping pills have kicked in.

Today was the second day of a book convention geared to genre fiction. Yesterday was great. I chose the panels instead of the readings and workshops because I find writers are often tell great stories, vocally. Much fun was had with the discussion involving Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. Everyone on the panels thought fanfiction was great.

Today was not so good. Due to stuff going on this past week, I could barely drag myself out of bed. I skipped the morning program, which I wasn't really interested in, and went to two workshops in the afternoon. The first, about writing urban fantasy, was interesting and revealed a HORRIBLE MISTAKE in my detective/urban fantasy/sci-fi thing. A really big problem that will require a tonne of research and significant rewrites. If I hadn't caught it and self-published the book, it would have been awful.

So that was good, but the second panel was supposed to be about how to build a back-story for your characters. That's what it was called. What it really was about was how to demonstrate the nature of your character through use of objects, vocabulary, setting, etc. Good stuff but not why I was there, and it involved exercises in which you had to create characters on the spot and write a scene for them. I HATE THAT. I don't need to dream up characters on the spot when I write, I don't dream up anything on the spot. If I'd known what the workshop was about, I wouldn't have gone, and since there were only two of us there, I couldn't sneak out.

It is bizarre to see articles about Canadian politics in foreign media. The Conservatives just picked a new leader for their party. He won't even have a chance at becoming prime minister until 2019, which means he's totally irrelevant to anyone outside of Canada. Why in the world do they care? Why do they think their readers will care?

Also, 45 just called Justin Trudeau "Justin from Canada," and I think that's hilarious.

Writing fiction has taken a backseat to other stuff I'm doing, and I've never fallen in love with the protagonist of the detective/sci-fi/urban fantasy thing. Anyone who has read all of my books knows my main characters tend to be dumped in situations they aren't really ready for. I wanted this one to be really experienced in her role. She's dealing with a unique situation, but she's comfortable and confident enough to just roll with things. But she's just not resonating with me.

The city I'm living in is beautiful this time of year. Lots of trees in bloom and warm enough without being unpleasantly humid. I love this city.

My dissertation for my master's degree has been read by eight people. It's not a topic of great interest, so the fact that anyone is reading it is a shock. The weird thing is that all of the readers are American. The dissertation does compare a particular area of law in Canada and the US - my supervisor knew that I added the American angle because the Canadian material didn't give me enough to meet the word count requirement, but the people who examined me didn't - but it's pretty clear it was written by a Canadian. So the interest from Americans is baffling.

I love the city I'm living in, and for a small city it has a lot of big city benefits without the disadvantages - no gridlock! - but it doesn't have a lot of events that I'm interested in. For example, I'm interested in book conventions, but most involve depressing "literature" and depressing non-fiction, neither of which I'm interested in.

So I'm delighted that the book convention for genre fiction has grown so much from it's first event last year that they're cutting off applications for authors to appear on panels. They simply don't have the room to accommodate more panels. And the space they're in is considerably larger than the space they'd used last year. I like listening to authors from every genre, even the genres I don't read, and the workshops are really helpful for the stuff I like to write, again, no matter what the genre the instructor favours.

And it's a much better deal, financially. The cost of a two-day ticket is lower than most of the single events at the literary event. I don't know if the literary convention pays the writers - the genre convention doesn't - but the prohibitive prices would bar a lot of people from attending. I'm wondering if that's on purpose.

I'm reading a fascinating book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk. The basic premise is that a trauma has a serious, physical impact on the brain, and that reliving that trauma, either on purpose or by suffering a flashback, continues to have an impact on both the brain and the body. There are some proposals for how to treat that. There is also a lot of detail about what different parts of the brain do, and how re-experiencing a trauma can hijack the part of the brain that is supposed to manage emotion so people can get an idea about how serious the perceived threat is and what can be done to properly address that threat.

Also, the writer discusses the development of information and knowledge concerning psychiatric treatment. That's interesting.

However, it is a hard read, with the some pretty blunt discussion about disturbing events. I would advise that anyone with triggers proceed with caution. I think people who deny that triggers are a real thing with serious consequences would benefit greatly from reading this book, but of course they would be the last to do so.

I'm not involved with any fantasy/sci-fi conventions, but I follow enough writers on Facebook that I'm aware not only of the existence of cons, but the frequency with which cons try to avoid dealing with the predators in their midst because they'd rather have the predators on their panels than create a safe environment for everyone. And do you know what I see every single time? "We're volunteers." And I say, so what? That is no defense for the failure to do the job properly. Every volunteer position I've ever had involved sessions in which I learned my duties and responsibilities, and sanctions for breaching either. My last one, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement. Now, I doubt anything serious would happen to me if I breached that agreement, but it would be a scummy thing to do, and at the very least I'd be kicked out for it.

If you're not going to do the job, don't volunteer.

I recognize that many volunteers in a con don't have any involvement with controlling who is or isn't part of the panels or other significant roles, my comment involves those who do.

I've been busy in areas other than writing. New jobs, new people, new courses, and taking advantage of the unusually warm weather. (While worrying about climate change.) I decided to spend a bunch of time researching something for the hell of it, and I'm contemplating writing a book about what I'm researching. This is because no one else has, at least no one that I can find, and it's a subject that will probably be of growing interest. I think the master's degree might be good enough as a credential for a publisher.

This means my work on the detective/urban fantasy/sci-fi-ish thing has been put on the back burner. I have to confess, my interest in it ebbs and flows, and I think it might be my new Easy Expedition. That took me five years to write, in the sense that I started it in 2011 and published it in 2016, because my attention was grabbed by other stories and going back to school sucked up all of my time and focus. I'm not giving up on it, I'll finish it eventually. Maybe I'll be in the position to publish it once it's done.

Ok, it's months since I got my degree, but I put my thesis up on research gate, as one does, and five people have started it. I have no way of knowing whether they finished it, but I get a little thrill that they thought the title and abstract interesting enough to read on. 5 is probably a sad, low number, but I didn't expect anyone to read it. It's not exactly a subject of great interest.

This is a post written by Seanan McGuire in 2012, called Things I Won't Do to My Characters, Ever. She was prompted to write this post by someone asking her "when" her female protagonists would "finally" be raped. When she said never, she was told leaving rape out of her fantasy/sci-fi story was unrealistic.

So these people can accept spaceships, but women who are never raped? That's too far beyond the ability to suspend belief.

My protagonists will never be raped, nor will regular members of the cast. In my detective/urban fantasy thing, there are characters, not protagonists, who have been raped in the past, but it has nothing to do with them being punished for being female characters or as a cheap means of increasing drama, nor does the story delve into the emotional and other impacts of being raped. It is entirely about the legal aspect of rape, and how our legal system viciously assaults victims from the time of the report to the dismissal of the charges in the courtroom. That aspect of the plot, unfortunately, has nothing to do with fantasy. It's not, unfortunately, unrealistic.

It infuriates me when people put online information about me without checking with me first. I deliberately don't put the name of my city online, and that includes not referring to big events. I don't put my picture online because I don't want to. Yet a person who keeps her own location to herself mentioned mine in a post. A guy who knew me in junior high took my photo off my law firm's website and spread it all over the place without even telling me. It wasn't until I expressed how ticked off I was on Facebook that I learned who did it, and he protested that he was doing it as a favour, to help my sales or whatever. Don't do favours for people without checking that they want that favour done. If he's ever put a picture of himself online, I've never seen it. I can ask people to take this stuff down, but my picture is still out there, it pops up when someone googles my name. It's also years out of date. If anyone meets me in person, they'll think I put that inaccurate picture up to fool people, like someone on a dating site trying to lure in people by using an old picture.

It's genuinely baffling to me. If someone is careful not to put their own information online, why in the world do they think it's ok to put someone else's personal information online?